


Deck the Halls

by thismighthurt



Category: VERIVERY (Band)
Genre: Baeheon, Canon Compliant, Christmas, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Mistletoe, VeriLaw, gyemin if you squint, is this really canon compliant tho?, mild comic violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:34:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28287795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thismighthurt/pseuds/thismighthurt
Summary: Dongheon is threatened by the mistletoe that Hoyoung brings in and just doesn't know how to act.
Relationships: Bae Hoyoung/Lee Dongheon, Hong Minchan/Kim Yongseung
Comments: 7
Kudos: 51





	Deck the Halls

**Author's Note:**

> am torn between loving all my fics equally, and constantly making the disclaimer that if you're here after Leading By Example i'm sorry but i dont think anything i can ever do will top that
> 
> and as usual, huge thank you to jae for telling me this wasn't completely awful, and ofc for catching the typos i can't!! jae this one's for you!!!
> 
> happy holidays, everyone!!

It was just a plastic length of imitation pine branch that Hoyoung had decked out in Christmas reds and golds.

By Wednesday, only three days after it had first come up, it was already more trouble than it was worth.

“‘VeriLaw Section 12, Paragraph 25: No two members shall attempt to kiss each other under the decorative berries that may or may not be mistletoe,’” Dongheon read. “‘Instead, members shall fight each other to the death, or at least until a clear victor emerges from the conflict.’”

“Cool,” said Kangmin. “Chan-hyung, time to die.”

“But only two members?” Yeonho asked, while Kangmin and Minchan scuffled in the background. He simply carded through their Netflix options while the two tumbled around the corner and into the fridge. “Hyung, what if I want to try kissing all my bros? What if we all end up under there?”

“It _is_ over the entrance to the kitchen,” said Yongseung. “A high-traffic area.”

And indeed, it was. Dongheon spared it a glance from where he was trying, very hard, to keep his eyes glued to his phone. He was afraid if he looked at the branch long enough, he’d have to relive its nativity scene from Sunday: Hoyoung, hair sleep-mussed in the wee hours of the morning, reading the instructions on the back of a pack of Command hooks as Dongheon watched the sun rise on them both.

Dongheon’s heart squeezed in his chest.

It was definitely a far cry from what was now a Wednesday dinner, in the dangerous free time the boys had between turning on the stove and waiting for their concoction to simmer. It wasn’t the first time that Minchan had stood under the kitchen archway and suggested they all kiss the cook, but it was definitely the first time Kangmin had tried to take him up on his offer.

“Be careful what you wish for,” Kangmin was saying now, but it still looked like he was craning his neck to cop a kiss off his hyung instead of just trying to put him into the ground.

Wait—concentrate, Dongheon. “‘None… of… the… members,’” he corrected, editing over the passage on his phone. “So how ever many of you end up under there all have to fight.”

“Solid.”

“Cool.”

Yongseung cracked his knuckles.

“So what’s the penalty, then?” said Gyehyeon from the sofa.

From the corner of his eye, Dongheon could see that Gyehyeon wasn’t looking right at him either. Instead, he emanated an aura that Dongheon found eerily familiar. He’d seen the same judging kind of concern on cats that perched on the low wall behind his parents’ house—you know, the ones that pointedly ignored Dongheon shoveling snow off their little patio?

So, translating Gyehyeon, resident catboy: _Hyung, what_ _are you even doing?_

And where did Dongheon even begin?

 _Hoyoung’s chair wobbled when he put that thing up, and I caught him,_ Dongheon dared Gyehyeon to understand. _I’ve been thinking about kissing him under the mistletoe since then. Happy?_

See, Dongheon couldn’t look at the branch strung across the top of the kitchen archway because not only would he recall the morning Hoyoung had put it up, but also feel the weight of Hoyoung in his arms, Hoyoung’s heartbeat against his palm where he’d caught him, and the roil in his own gut at the closeness and the warmth and early morning sunshine glancing off Hoyoung’s eyes.

They’d held each other’s gaze for a too-long moment; that is, until a Christmas ball had slipped off the branch and bounced comically off of Dongheon’s head. He and Hoyoung had looked up, surprised, and seen the mistletoe that Hoyoung had put in, dangling directly above them both.

And in present time, like he’d heard all this—or more likely Gyehyeon already even knew; Dongheon could never really read cats too well—Gyehyeon’s eyes flicked briefly over to Hoyoung.

Hoyoung was standing by the stove, half so Minchan and Kangmin didn’t somehow set themselves on fire and half so he could stir their spaghetti sauce. Dongheon would be lying if he said he hadn’t been sneaking glances at Hoyoung to see how much the new VeriLaw was alarming him, and lying again if he said his heart wasn’t sinking with how it looked like Hoyoung wasn’t too cut up about simply dropkicking Dongheon instead.

And like the cats behind Dongheon’s old house, Gyehyeon seemed to accept Dongheon’s current nonsense, internalize it, and move on to more important things.

 _That’s right, Gyehyeon._ It really wasn’t a big deal. It was just that Dongheon nearly died at his members’ hands again, and that was always when the VeriLaw machine went _brrr_.

“Would the penalty be for not fighting, losing the fight, or trying to kiss?” Yeonho said.

“Trying to kiss should get a penalty, if that’s what the law’s about,” said Hoyoung, and Dongheon felt his heart wither in his chest. “‘Trying to kiss another member under the Christmas berries warrants being bound by Christmas ribbon;’ hyung, write that down.”

“‘Warrants… being… bound…’” Dongheon echoed, trying not to sound too dead inside. Still, he sighed. “Bound to what?”

“Is that not a little…” Yeonho mused, over the show he’d pulled up, “Y’know. Kinky?”

Dongheon actually agreed, yet somehow, it did make it to the VeriLaws that offenders would be just… Bound.

“But, oh!” Hoyoung chimed in again. “How ‘bout whoever loses the fight has to buy the victor a small Christmas present, too?”

“Then I yield!” Minchan cried, from the floor. “I yield, kid! What do you want? Snacks? Toothpaste—?"

Kangmin bopped him again in the stomach. Dongheon figured Minchan kind of deserved that, because _toothpaste?_

“I have to be left alive to get you something,” Minchan hissed.

And for a second after that, everyone held their breath as Kangmin blinked, pouted, and searched for his answer.

“Christmas stocking,” Kangmin finally said.

“Come again?”

“The one where Santa puts gifts in. Good for when I have to put gifts in after I win all my fights.”

Dongheon did get the vague feeling this would backfire on him someday. If he had more of a conscience, he might’ve thought twice about this, but instead he simply hit save on the document on his phone.

They were all big boys. They could handle the consequences of him using the VeriLaws to hide behind.

( _Is this not a little too reflective of corrupt lawmaking structures in real life?_ Dongheon did wonder briefly, but then someone was stabbing someone else on Yeonho’s true crime show, and that was that.)

***

And that was how not one, but seven more Command hooks came up on their wall within the week.

“I support small businesses,” was how Minchan opened up his spiel on the seven personalized Christmas stockings he’d purchased at a small night market.

“They’ve got our names on them and everything,” Hoyoung said excitedly. He dropped himself onto the couch next to Dongheon, the frost still sticking to his clothes from the outside and everything, and unbidden Dongheon felt his arm loop around Hoyoung’s shoulders.

Hoyoung leaned into him. “Hyung, look at that, doesn’t it make you feel the Christmas rush?”

“Sure,” Dongheon managed, amid a wan laugh and the butterflies trying to take over his insides. “Christmas rush” was one way to put it, Hoyoung.

Dongheon turned away from him just in time to see Minchan hang up the stocking with his name on it.

***

The new VeriLaw was also how, not even a day after the stockings were hung, Kangmin ended up on the floor with the strength and swiftness of Gyehyeon socking him in the gut.

“Shit. _Shit_ , kid, I’m sorry,” said Gyehyeon, dropping to his knees as well. “I didn’t wanna tangle with you so I just…”

Kangmin gave him a thumbs up while he caught his breath. “Whaddya want, hyung?”

Their little dorm was in various states of laundry-doing, too preoccupied to hold their breath this time as Gyehyeon went through the motions. Dongheon himself looked up from a pile he felt more like worming into than folding.

“A playlist,” Gyehyeon said after a while. Dongheon wanted to congratulate him; it was a prudent choice that ensured Kangmin’s money would stay where it needed to be but guaranteed he’d be kept busy for a good amount of time. “A Christmas playlist, with like, songs you can look out the window to, I guess.”

Then without thinking, Dongheon reached around the corner for Hoyoung, dragging him quietly away from where he was simply watching the clothes spin in circles in the machine. He willed Hoyoung to follow his line of vision until he could also see how Kangmin was looking up at Gyehyeon with witchlight in his eyes, like Gyehyeon asking that of him was already the greatest gift in the world.

“They’re cute, sometimes,” Hoyoung giggled, so close that the words were warm on Dongheon’s ear. Suddenly Dongheon’s grip on Hoyoung’s palm was burning, so much that when Dongheon finally stuffed his hands back into his dryer-fresh laundry, it almost felt cool.

***

And in the next few days, a small chart came up, keeping track of who owed whom. A couple of thumb wrestling matches resulted in Yongseung and Yeonho each owing Dongheon a present, and an ill-fated, best-of-three _cham-cham-cham_ match meant that Dongheon owed Yeonho one back. And:

“A new blanket,” Kangmin asked of Yeonho after a brief struggle. “Just a thin one is alright.”

“Can I have some French toast, hyung?” Yeonho asked Hoyoung after a game of rock paper scissors. “Like how you would cook, back when we were trainees.”

“Hot chocolate mix, please,” said Minchan to Gyehyeon after a game of red hands that Dongheon would swear up and down that Minchan had manipulated. Gyehyeon hadn’t stood a chance. “But not the ones with the marshmallows. Those make me kind of sad.”

Some people, though, did choose to go another route. The bright red ribbon around Yongseung’s wrist was hard to miss as he pulled the cereal box out of their cupboard.

“So did you mean to kiss him, or was that just a better option than fighting?” Dongheon yawned.

He was still pretty sleep-fazed on the outside, but his insides were doing a pretty good job of feeling deflated. Yongseung had the gall come to breakfast saying that he respected not getting kisses, but that it really, absolutely could not be him.

But if anyone could pour milk pensively over their cereal, that was also Yongseung. “‘Of all weapons in the world I now know love to be the most dangerous, for I have suffered a mortal wound.’”

And if there were anyone who could disappear by getting sucked into the open fridge and just never returning…. _Please let that be me_ , Dongheon prayed, tired.

Instead of trying to disappear into the fridge, though, Dongheon decided to head out for his coffee as normal, and nearly spilled the whole thing as he picked it up from the counter.

“Sorry, sorry,” Hoyoung laughed from where he’d snuck up on him. “You’re a little earlier today, huh, hyung? I thought I could catch you so we could have breakfast together.”

Dongheon felt himself suddenly, violently curse Yongseung for being weird enough to drive him out the apartment so fast—but backtracked, because that couldn’t be good for his karma. Instead, he offered one of his little takeout muffins to Hoyoung.

“Holding you hostage now, though,” said Hoyoung through a mouthful, and Dongheon couldn’t help his heart jumping at that. In the midmorning air of a quiet, quarantine December, Hoyoung’s laughter was like music. “Ten minutes at the department store, hyung. I just need to buy more Christmas ribbon, ‘cause I barely found enough for Yongseung and the other guy’s still at large, you know!”

They took longer than ten minutes. It was eleven minutes for Dongheon to finish his coffee outside the store, another ten contemplating if they could buy a steel-frame pool, discounted off-season, and get away with putting that on the veranda, and a whole fifteen minutes more buying standard red ribbon and going through a whole box of bargain ones that Dongheon insisted would look good twined around their curtain rod.

Dongheon was still smiling much, much longer after that, even when a brooding Minchan joined him on a chair by the curtain rod, his fringe tied up with the red ribbon he and Hoyoung had bought that morning.

***

And so came Christmas morning, where Dongheon walked blearily out of his bedroom only to nearly die again.

“Fuck,” he said, softly, clutching the couch hard for support. Now he saw the culprit: the small plastic Christmas ball he’d stepped on, though thankfully not hard enough to crush.

 _Hoyoung would’ve killed me_ , Dongheon thought, _As if I didn’t already see my life flash before my eyes…_

Dongheon picked the ball up and let his gaze drift to the Christmas branch. There were another few baubles on the floor leading up to it, as well as the middle Command hook fallen to its tragic death. The branch itself sagged so the Christmas berries dangled over the archway lower than normal.

“It says to wait an hour before we hang anything on the hooks,” Hoyoung had said. “But I stuck up six, so we can wait just ten minutes.”

Now that the initial shock of almost dying had worn off, all Dongheon could do was chuckle groggily at that and make for where he figured Hoyoung would’ve kept the spare adhesives for the hooks.

“Now, I’m not Hong Minchan,” he yawned at the stuff, words thick with sleep and dialect in the early morning, “But I’d appreciate it if you acted like he’d stuck you up instead, and functioned properly, Command hook-nim.”

Dongheon pulled a chair towards the kitchen archway now. He stepped onto it so he and the Christmas branch were eye to eye.

 _I’m going to do worse than Hoyoung and just put the branch back on soon as the hook sticks,_ Dongheon thought. _But it’s coming down after Christmas anyway, so…_

Suddenly the Christmas branch was slipping away from Dongheon, and his stomach felt like it was hurtling towards his throat.

“All Christmas is is death!” Dongheon managed, when the world had finally stopped falling away. “This is the second time I’ve almost died today, and I haven’t even had my coffee yet!”

He’d fallen off the chair, he’d understood, but wait—why was it so warm, and who was he talking to?

Hoyoung groaned from under him. “Death,” he echoed, weakly. “Yeah, hyung.”

Dongheon’s heart leapt out of his chest. He rolled bodily off of Hoyoung—not the right move; it was almost like he steamrollered him in the process, and Hoyoung rolled even farther away, clutching himself and whimpering dramatically.

“Oh, hell,” said Dongheon. He crawled to Hoyoung and tried to take the poor guy into his arms, but Hoyoung fended him off with an arm that was somehow all angles. “Bae Hoyoung, please, I’m trying to apologize.”

“I’m not gonna make it, hyung,” said Hoyoung, “All because you didn’t learn from last Sunday, and somehow still pulled the wobbly chair.”

“I’ll make it up to you, but you have to be alive for that.”

“Death seems inevitable, hyung.” But now Dongheon could hear the laughter Hoyoung was trying to tamp down on as well. “I don’t know how you’ll live without me, but you’ll have to manage.”

Dongheon sniffed, for drama. Now Hoyoung let Dongheon roll him over and Dongheon’s guilt surfaced hard and fast again, because damn, did he look worse for wear—

“If I’m ugly right now it’s because you fell on me,” Hoyoung butted in, fast. “Please remember, _you fell on me._ ”

“And I apologize,” Dongheon said. “Really, I’m sorry. Also, Hoyoung, you’re never ugly.”

In the early morning light, Hoyoung’s gaze went suddenly, unbelievably soft, and Dongheon felt all the strength leave his muscles. He settled on the cold floor next to Hoyoung and heaved a sigh at the ceiling.

“Sorry again.”

“I’m still dying.”

“What?”

“You have to grant my last wish, hyung,” said Hoyoung, voice fake-feeble.

He rolled over so he was sitting by Dongheon now, and raised one fist as if to show him. No—as if urging Dongheon to do the same. While sleep was long gone from Dongheon’s faculties, confusion was clouding them fast, and there was nothing he could do but copy Hoyoung and raise his first midway in the air.

“My last wish is…” 

Dongheon was frozen, half entranced and half terrified, because what were they doing, making fists at each other on the floor under those damned Christmas berries and—

Wait.

“ _Ga-i ga-i bo!”_ said Hoyoung, throwing rock when he knew precisely that Dongheon wasn’t concentrated enough to throw anything but scissors.

“Shit!” Dongheon swore, in time with Hoyoung’s yell of triumph. “You FOX—!”

“Sneak attack,” Hoyoung declared, flashing Dongheon a peace sign. Now were breaths away from legitimately throwing down under the Christmas berries, with Hoyoung’s shit-eating grin doing things to Dongheon’s heart that gave Hoyoung a good whole chance at winning.

An idea struck Dongheon then. “Ah! We’ve already fought under the Christmas berries!”

Hoyoung blinked wide eyes. “What, you _falling on me_?”

“Sneak attack,” Dongheon echoed, throwing Hoyoung his own peace sign and letting his tongue flash between his teeth.

Hoyoung looked like he was contemplating how rude it would be to box his hyung, and also how likely it was that he’d actually, really die in this fight.

“Now you gotta grant my wish, Hoyoungie,” said Dongheon, but as soon as the words left his mouth he felt like he wanted to drag them back in.

Because naturally, the next question from good, sweet, caring, _compromising_ Hoyoung was, “Well, what’s your stupid wish, then, hyung?”

Dongheon felt his breath catch in his throat.

See, there was nothing more that Dongheon wanted to do than kiss Hoyoung under the Christmas berries, whatever kind of berries they fuckin’ were. Dongheon had known that since Sunday. Kissing Hoyoung in _general_ , though—that was something he’d known he’d wanted to do for a very, very long time, and was something he wanted so badly that it scared him.

It scared him enough that when he’d caught Hoyoung’s chair, and then him, warm in his arms as the sunlight just began to stream into the apartment, he’d felt like his heart was about to burst out of his chest. When Hoyoung had let his gaze drift from his eyes down to his mouth, Dongheon thought he was going to die. When Hoyoung’s grip on him softened but still somehow had him leaning into Dongheon, Dongheon had felt simply felt eviscerated, like there wasn’t any Dongheon left on this mortal plane of thought, and this was really how he was going to go out, kissing Bae Hoyoung.

Then Hoyoung had swerved, sheepish, and Dongheon felt like someone had turned out the lights, cut the choir and swept in a torrential downpour. Where Hoyoung had been so solid in his arms, Dongheon felt like he was now grasping at smoke.

“Look, you first,” said Dongheon now, through the lump in his throat, “We’ve stayed under the Maybe-Mistletoe long enough that we probably needed two fights, so I’ll grant your wish too. What do you want for Christmas, Hoyoung?”

 _Nice one_ , Dongheon told himself.

“A kiss.”

 _Wait_.

“What?” said Dongheon.

“I mean—”

“No, I mean—what?”

“I take it back--!”

“Wait, don’t!” said Dongheon. The words weren’t exactly coming easy, what with his heart tap dancing frantically in his chest, but he was glad he managed at least that.

“I panicked on Sunday,” Hoyoung admitted. “I mean, I went from feeling like I was about to die, falling off the chair, to, I dunno, still feeling like I was about to die when…”

“When…?”

“When you were holding me like that.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Um.” It was only then that Hoyoung looked up at Dongheon, eyes pleading and almost glassy. “Hyung, I haven’t been reading this wrong, have I?”

And somehow, through the bells tolling and firecrackers going off in his head, Dongheon managed, “Definitely not.”

“Oh,” Hoyoung responded, softer than Dongheon had ever heard him, “Great.”

“This is kind of crazy, you know.” Dongheon swallowed. “I would have asked for exactly the same thing.”

“ _Oh_ ,” said Hoyoung, even softer than last time, his grip going tighter on the sleeves of Dongheon’s old sweater. “But wait—you wanted to—to kiss me… so you decreed this VeriLaw?”

Dongheon cleared his throat. “I also panicked on Sunday. But mistletoe, Hoyoung, really?”

“It’s actually holly,” said Hoyoung, “I knew this whole time but everyone got excited over it, and I didn’t want to ruin the fun.”

“So nobody really had to kiss… But ah, the law is the law now, I guess…”

And just like that Dongheon leaned in and pressed his lips against Hoyoung’s.

That, really, was everything and more that Dongheon could have ever dreamed of. He couldn’t have imagined the way kissing Hoyoung— _kissing Bae Hoyoung!—_ sent currents up and down everything he was; couldn’t have anticipated how Hoyoung’s fingers would end up splayed over where Dongheon’s heart was hammering against his ribcage. Dongheon’s hands were cupping Hoyoung’s cheeks as if he were something fragile, but he did let his thumb rub gently over smooth skin, let one of his hands move slowly so he was brushing Hoyoung’s hair off his forehead as he leaned in a little further to feel just how soft and warm Hoyoung’s lips were against his own.

While all Dongheon had wanted not even a minute ago was simply to kiss Bae Hoyoung, now he knew greed a hundred-fold more than he’d ever experienced: He wanted this never to stop. He wanted to always remember what Hoyoung’s smile felt like against his lips. He wanted to see how much _warmer_ they could get like this, and what it meant for Hoyoung to have his fingers curl into the fabric of his pajamas.

Still, Dongheon and Hoyoung sprung apart in time with a mighty clatter in the living room. When they looked, Hong Minchan was on the floor like a snapshot from Yeonho’s crime show, surrounded by assorted holiday baubles, their TV remote, and its dislodged batteries.

“Don’t mind me,” Minchan said, as if he were easy to un-mind given the circumstances. “I mean, I don’t know how this will hold up in VeriCourt, but by all means, don’t let that stop you.”

“It won’t hold up well at all, though,” said Gyehyeon from the shadows of the hallway, but Dongheon knew him well enough to recognize the smile in his voice. “Kangmin, go get Yongseung’s ribbon.”

“So even if the kissing was the wish, they still get punished for that?” came Yeonho’s voice. “Damn. That’s solid as hell.”

“And I’m not saying you can’t continue later,” said Minchan, “But I’m going to need you two to move out of the way if I’m going to cook us all breakfast.”

“I’ve been in the laundry room all this time, also,” said Yongseung, from beyond the kitchen. “I couldn’t leave because I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“There is absolutely no privacy in this household, is there,” said Dongheon then, to nobody in particular.

Beside him Hoyoung started to laugh, his shoulders shaking silently. He stood, and offered his hand to Dongheon.

“Merry Christmas, hyung. I hope you liked your present,” he said, grinning. “Fight you for it again later.”

“I swear, you can just ask nicely,” Dongheon all but sobbed, taking Hoyoung’s hand.

Once Dongheon was standing, though, he gave Hoyoung’s hand a little squeeze and held fast. The color came in high on Hoyoung’s cheeks, but he didn’t let go, either.

“WAIT, I FOUND THE RIBBON! ARE THEY STILL UNDER THE BERRIES?” That was Kangmin, of course, because who could be yelling like this so early in the morning? Who else would subject their apartment block to his thunderous footsteps as he sprinted out of his room? “HYUNGS, TODAY IS MY LAST DAY TO COP GIFTS OFF YOU!”

Dongheon felt Hoyoung’s grip go a little tighter in his before he finally comprehended what Kangmin was saying.

“MERRY CHRISTMAS, HYUNGS!” And to Kangmin’s credit, he did sound like he meant it.

Even this: “DEFEND YOURSELVES!”

**Author's Note:**

> do you all get it... Deck the Halls... "Deck" the Halls.... "Deck" like "punch" hahahahahahahahaha yell at me on twitter i'm @seijohofficial


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